The email was brief and to the point. If you bought a ticket for an upcoming Run for Your Lives zombie 5K race, frame it -- it's worthless.

The race's producer informed its thousands of customers in the Oct. 30 mass message that all upcoming Run For Your Lives events "are postponed indefinitely" and that participants "should contact your bank for a full refund."

The sudden cancellation of the popular theme-based runs, where blood-spattered and disheveled "zombies" give chase to the "living" as they wind their way through a 5-kilometer course sprinkled with obstacles and traps, set off a firestorm on social media. Participants demanded their money back from Run For Your Lives' Baltimore-based owner, Reed Street Productions, and even sent death threats to higher-ups at the events management firm.

Run For Your Lives' Twitter account went dark. Its Facebook page, which had 800,000 followers, vanished. The event's website -- runforyourlives.com -- was taken down.

Paying special attention to the agitation bubbling up across the Internet that day before Halloween was Jeff Suffolk, president of Human Movement Management. As head of the Louisville-based event management company responsible for putting on the Dirty Girl mud run, the Ugly Sweater Run and the Rocky Mountain Triathlon, Suffolk could see the obvious business opportunity at hand.

But first and foremost, the 33-year-old entrepreneur felt obliged to blunt the critical blow that the implosion of a well-known institution like Run For Your Lives might exact on his industry. There were already stories, Suffolk said, of people being burned by fly-by-night companies pushing events on the web, collecting registration fees and fleeing town.

"As soon as I heard the news, I knew we had to do something," he said. "For more than half of the people who are running, it's their first race. And if we didn't try to fix this, it would be their last run."

48 hours to make it work

But before Suffolk could make a move, Reed Street Productions' co-founder Ryan Hogan emailed him. He told Suffolk that despite conservative growth projections at the company, expenditures grew too quickly, "sales flatlined," and the cash ran out. Later that evening he agreed to give Suffolk his database of nearly 400,000 customer names so that Human Movement could take over the high-demand zombie runs.

Attempts by the Camera to reach principals with Reed Street were unsuccessful and a phone number listed for the company's Baltimore office rang without anyone picking up.

Suffolk thinks about 30,000 people have already paid anywhere from $50 to $100 apiece to take part in upcoming runs. His plan is to make participants whole by producing the two scheduled Run For Your Lives events left this year and making sure the six scheduled in 2014 also go off without a hitch.

But Suffolk had little time to plan back on Oct. 30 -- the next Run For Your Lives event was scheduled for that weekend in Phoenix. Three thousand participants awaited.

"We knew the ultimate goal was to save the race that was happening in 48 hours," he said.

Suffolk took his 18-month-old son out trick or treating on Halloween, loaded up his trailer with equipment needed for the run and made for Arizona in the dead of the night.

Serious fence-mending needed

Suffolk, who oversees a staff of 80 full time employees and 70 seasonal workers at his Louisville office on South Street, knows there is an enormous potential long-term upside from gaining a competitor's business, particularly an outfit as prominent as Run For Your Lives.

But first, he has some serious fence-mending to do in the wake of company's departure.

Some of those who were stiffed are now directing their anger at Human Movement, which has been contacting participants over the last week to tell them that their zombie run is still on. A few emails that went out about Saturday's upcoming race in Orlando were met with replies of "burn in hell, you stole $100," Suffolk said.

Suffolk believes the negative responses he has received from participants are simply reflexive and rash because people don't yet understand the management change that has occurred.

"The PR and customer service side is an enormous challenge," he said. "Some people think we're a shell company."

Suffolk said putting on the zombie runs that Reed Street Productions organized and walked away from could cost Human Movement $50,000 apiece, once permits are pulled, the venue is paid for and equipment and staff are moved into place.

But he said the Phoenix event on Nov. 2 went well. Suffolk got help from old friends in the Arizona capital, hired five employees from Run For Your Lives who had just been let go three days earlier and were still in the city, and "brought in our own equipment and built our own stuff."

David Benjes, who works in the Boulder offices of San Diego-based events company Competitor Group Inc. and gave Human Movement a hand with the Phoenix zombie run, said if there's anyone who can make the best out of a bad situation it's Suffolk.

"Jeff has been in this game long enough that he probably wouldn't have committed to these events if he didn't have the resources," Benjes said.

If Suffolk can win back those who were spurned by Run For Your Lives, he could lay the foundation for developing one of the larger and more successful event production companies.

"He just needs to take all those customers and do it right, and they will be loyal," Benjes said. "Do it right, and those 380,000 people are going to tell at least one friend."

'Calculated risk' taken

But first there is the matter of getting through the next few zombie runs with Human Movement essentially paying out of pocket, and attempting to defray costs by convincing customers to commit to participating in future events.

"We're a for-profit company and we definitely can't pay bills on goodwill," Suffolk said.

But he said his company has enough experience putting on events that it should be able to make it through the next several months fulfilling others' obligations and then hopefully find itself with a much larger, and more loyal, customer base than it had before. And in an even more robust industry overall.

"It's a matter of our industry taking an enormous ding where we all go away together or we take a calculated risk and weather the storm," he said.

David Janowiec, who founded Human Movement Management with Suffolk four years ago and has since formed his own events production company in Erie called The Recess Factory, said there is no doubt a risk in what his former colleague is doing.

But he said it's a risk that Suffolk can manage and minimize through his business savvy and experience in organizing, implementing and promoting running events.

"If you see an opportunity, you gotta take it," Janowiec said. "And the majority of people are going to be grateful that someone stepped in."

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